The Wife

The Wife (2013)

by Tom Noonan

Directed by Ivan Henwood

Featuring Ivan Henwood, Paul Madziak, Jane Walker, Kerri Woloszyn

The piece is a celebration of the mystery and insanity of relationships. People come to your house uninvited, won’t leave, get drunk, say things they will probably regret forever, take their clothes off and dance to weird music. – Tom Noonan, Playwright

“4 1/2 STARS. Cynical, sharp and often sharply funny, this Canadian premiere of playwright Tom Noonan’s dark comedy cuts to the core. It’s a play about surfaces and the tension between love and lust and married domesticity, and the home-like set gives local troupe Snakeskin Jacket’s four excellently rehearsed actors a comfortable place to let their characters’ neuroses flail free. They have a great script to play with, as one couple’s impromptu visit to their therapist devolves into a disastrous dinner party, tearing at their defensive veneers of gender and respectability. The four actors capture this perfectly, as their characters’ public masks collapse to reveal aching fragility. Jane Walker shines especially bright as spunky but damaged young wife Arlie, while Kerri Woloszyn lets rigid Rita’s vulnerability spill out quietly. The honesty is hard to watch but beautifully human in the end.” — Melissa Martin, Winnipeg Free Press

“This was by far one of the most powerful pieces of theatre I have seen at the fringe this year. Adapted by Ivan Henwood, from a film by Tom Noonan, it translated beautifully onto the stage. The four actors that fill these meaty rolls are all equally captivating and thrilling to watch. Their nuances, facial and body movements, and tone will have you on the edge of your seats with a gasp in your throat the whole time. I was thrilled, terrified, and moved from beginning to end. Definitely a must see.” — Tim Gray, The Jenny Revue